People smuggling, trafficking, organised gangs – what’s free about that?

[dodger]

https://www.cpbml.org.uk/news/why-mo...abour-not-free

The problem facing the countries of Europe is not a migrant crisis. It is a people smuggling and a trafficking crisis, which needs to be tackled. See related article Points of profit for the stages in the trade. At each stage there is a different set of criminals who work as a cell – take one stage out and the others continue.
Each country needs to deal with the stage relevant to the flow. Instead of imposing fines, Britain could start with imprisoning the employers using this type of labour and confiscating their assets.

[willowtooth]

The employers shouldn't be punished they should be rewarded for housing, training, and providing identification for these people some of whom have walked thousands of miles for who knows what reason, to reach their final destination. If their should be any punishment for using immigrant labor it should be fines directed toward hiring doctors or scientists, highly paid positions, and those fines and taxes should be sent almost in full back to whatever country that highly paid professional came from.

[dodger]

https://www.cpbml.org.uk/news/why-se...health-matters

The NHS does currently rely on overseas recruited staff. Those already here should be valued, and if committed to staying in Britain are part of the working class here. But the “model” of overseas recruitment is damaging to the UK and to the source country. Immigration asset-strips poorer countries, taking their younger, more educated and skilled people. Migration undermines the home countries' development, and increases their dependency.

Since the EU issued its Code of Practice for the Active Recruitment of Healthcare Professionals in 2001, medical migration has surged. Many African and Caribbean countries have more of their home-trained doctors working in the OECD countries than at home. 90 per cent of Jamaica's nurses and 90 per cent of Haiti's nurses work in OECD countries. A third of Britain's doctors are foreign-trained. This brain drain widens world health inequality.

As for rewarding employers for employing cheap labour...that takes the biscuit.

[dodger]

https://www.cpbml.org.uk/news/no-borders-no-control The free movement of labour encourages the modern slavery of workers moving at the orders of cheapskate global employers, gangmasters and people traffickers. It adds to the huge number of the reserve army of the unemployed. And it defies the laws of economic gravity to think that you can massively expand the supply of labour without lowering its price.

[dodger]

Dagenham’s Labour MP Jon Cruddas: “immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community – and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment. Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour.”
Karl Marx: “The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it.” So it is no surprise that major US corporations spent $345 million lobbying for pro-immigration bills in just two years. And it is no surprise that the EU, the Employers’ Union, promotes the free movement of labour.

[ckaihatsu]

Dagenham’s Labour MP Jon Cruddas: “immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community – and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment. Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour.”
Karl Marx: “The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it.” So it is no surprise that major US corporations spent $345 million lobbying for pro-immigration bills in just two years. And it is no surprise that the EU, the Employers’ Union, promotes the free movement of labour.

The implications of this reactionary position of yours are having to build and enforce national boundaries / borders for every country, between all adjacent countries, denying people international mobility, denying workers the option of life and work in a First World economy, and denying the children of migrants these same opportunities -- all for a capitalist-economic rationale.

Where's the international *solidarity*, as in cross-border organizing for the combined withholding of labor if workers on both sides of the fence aren't treated with parity -- ?

[Alet]

So it is no surprise that major US corporations spent $345 million lobbying for pro-immigration bills in just two years. And it is no surprise that the EU, the Employers’ Union, promotes the free movement of labour.

You are right, it's absolutely no surprise. And nobody ever doubted that the bourgeoisie (big capital in particular) is in favor of immigration for reasons of capital accumulation as opposed to humanitarian concerns. So fucking what? What does this worthless platitude tell us, what are the political implications of this for the Left? You're a petty bourgeois ideologue because your opposition to capitalism is entirely reactionary. "Capitalist" for you is just another term for "evil" because everything you can qualify as capitalist is in your mind an external threat, which needs to be eradicated - rather than historical relations you yourself are immersed in as an active, constitutive subject. Tell us, dodger, how is the drive for profit inherently wrong and not the constitutive force of the present social order we ourselves are part of, a real force not to be abolished but to be transformed? The difference is between the mere abolition of capitalism, which is absolutely reactionary in nature, and its Hegelian Aufhebung, which means to supersede it while carrying forward its progressive elements. We Marxists recognize that the drive for profit remains an alienated process, but one which opened up the large-scale transformation of nature. We recognize that formal democracy is not democratic ENOUGH, that the free movement of labor is an achievement which is not radical ENOUGH. For all we care, you can keep your reactionary sentiments, I mean it, but don't act as if you are restricted to OI for no reason, attempting to base your positions on Marx. This is simply dishonest.

[ckaihatsu]

On something of a tangent here's a good biopic-type treatment of human trafficking from the 19th century:


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5788136/


The Institute (2017)

R | 1h 30min | Thriller | 3 March 2017 (USA)



In 19th century Baltimore, a girl stricken with grief from her parents' untimely death, voluntarily checks herself into the Rosewood Institute, and is subjected to bizarre and increasingly ... See full summary »

Directors: James Franco, Pamela Romanowsky
Writers: Adam Rager, Matt Rager
Stars: Vincent Alvas, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Argenziano |

[willowtooth]

Dagenham’s Labour MP Jon Cruddas: “immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community – and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment. Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour.”
Karl Marx: “The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it.” So it is no surprise that major US corporations spent $345 million lobbying for pro-immigration bills in just two years. And it is no surprise that the EU, the Employers’ Union, promotes the free movement of labour.

Yeah, but you're forgetting that overpopulation is myth.

[ComradeAllende]

The employers shouldn't be punished they should be rewarded for housing, training, and providing identification for these people...

I don't think we have to resort to subsidizing capitalists in order to promote humanitarian ends; simply allowing them to hire the migrants ought to be enough.

And to be fair to OP, the historical line of the various socialist parties (the American Socialist Party particularly) tends to be rather prudish on the issue of immigration, primarily out of concern for expanding the reserve army of labor and depressing wages (although racial supremacy did play a sizeable role, particularly in the right-wing of the movement). That doesn't excuse anybody for banning refugees, but at the very least it provides some depth and nuance to the whole immigration debate.

[dodger]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1B2...39&store=books

Useful study of the impact on Greece of the EU dogma of free movement of labour, 21 Feb. 2017By
William Podmore



This review is from: Mass Replacement Migration: The Example of Greece (Paperback)

This very useful book explores the impact on Greece of the EU dogma of free movement of labour. Greece has a population of ten million. But by 2011, there were 1.2 million migrants living in Greece, costing 32 billion euros. Another 740,000 arrived in 2015 alone, many displacing Greek workers.
Refugees don’t just ‘flow’. Wars alone do not force mass migrations. For example, in the Second World War, there was no great movement of French people from occupied France.
Vast movements of people have to be organised. The British Empire organised massive population movements, through the slave trade, forced emigration to Australia, and the forced movement of indentured labour from India to Africa.
The vast movements into Greece of people coerced by poverty and misery are privatised, outsourced, to Chinese mafia gangs and Albanian smugglers. The Chinese mafia demands 10,000 euros for every immigrant they bring into Greece from China, Thailand and Pakistan.
A Greek minister, and major employer, said, “Immigrants are God’s blessing, we need them because they work with one third of a Greek worker’s wages, because they cannot go on strike, they cannot form unions, they can do nothing.” The ‘no borders’ anarchists ally with the employing class, denouncing all who disagree with them as racists, driving people into the arms of Golden Dawn. As ever, the ultra-left and the far right are locked in each other’s arms.
Schengen is supposed to defend the EU’s borders from illegal immigrants, but Greece does not prosecute or deport them, instead it legalises them, breaking its own laws. This raises the suspicion that there is some secret EU-Greek government deal to allow this breach of Schengen.
A former MP of the New Democracy party said, “the issue was raised of supporting Albania by showing tolerance in the issue of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, because the neighbouring country had made a definitive turn to the west and should be supported in this course.”

As Marx wrote in 1866 of employers’ recruitment of workers from Europe to defeat a strike in Britain, “The purpose of this importation is the same as that of the importation of Indian coolies to Jamaica, namely, perpetuation of slavery.”

///////This is a marxist explanation regarding neoliberal globalisation and its offshoot mass replacement migration and how it is used and abused by global corporations in the way it affects Greece. Many eyewitness reports and historical analysis of the subject.

[ckaihatsu]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1B2...39&store=books

///////This is a marxist explanation regarding neoliberal globalisation and its offshoot mass replacement migration and how it is used and abused by global corporations in the way it affects Greece. Many eyewitness reports and historical analysis of the subject.

The book itself is a Marxist analysis, but the quote you included is from a customer *review* -- not from the author.

But by 2011, there were 1.2 million migrants living in Greece, costing 32 billion euros.

This statement serves to show that you continue to be more concerned with the 'bottom-line' costs of humanitarian efforts than the humanitarianism of the efforts themselves.

[Jimmie Higgins]

1. The capitalists support immigration and simultaneously support restrictions of immigration. They seek to "manage" the flow of labor for various changing, sometimes competing reasons. Borders, border laws, etc are a big part of how they do this. Capitalists building the California railroads literally kidnapped labor from china, then a few years later were backing a freeze on any migration from china.

Arguing for increasing that mechanism of control (even if it's the general ruling class against some specific capitalists or even industries) has no overlap with Marxism--it's simply weighing in on a debate among capitalists about the best way to herd labor.

Basic Marxism: workers have no nation. Blow up the borders, full human freedom of movement.

2. Borders do not protect workers from exploitation. If migrant labor is more subject to repression or shittier labor exploitation, the problem is not their employment, but the difference in migration status. The solution: fight to get rid of tiers of workers, smash laws that treat domestic and migrant labor differently.

3. Supposedly pro-labor arguments against migrants (labor-chauvinism) are incoherent. They have a scattershot set of reasons why migration is bad for domestic workers so the goal-post is always moving around. Is it super-exploitation, reserve army of labor, ethnic division of workers, or some ruling class plot? Any single rationale is easily shot-down, so a new one pops up in its place. The only logical constant is some kind of xenophobia.

Dodger, this is a xenophobic and anti-working class argument you are making. Don't slime Marxism by cramming random quotes together to justify this rotting puss-filled position.







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[ckaihatsu]

As ever, the ultra-left and the far right are locked in each other’s arms.

Also, this baseless assertion needs to be addressed on its own -- it's a common *fallacy* that 'the ends of the political spectrum curl and meet each other', to say that there's some sort of presumed political *overlap* between the far-left and the far-right.

This fallacy can be disproved by looking at what each respective side defends -- fascists *always* defend the status-quo, or private ownership of the means of mass production, and private property, while the hard-left certainly does *not*, arguing for the common *collectivization* under workers control of all such productive implements.

[dodger]

The ‘no borders’ anarchists ally with the employing class, denouncing all who disagree with them as racists, driving people into the arms of Golden Dawn. As ever, the ultra-left and the far right are locked in each other’s arms.

Those who denounce borders are very much aligning themselves with Industrialists ///bankers . Written in stone Globalism. The EU is built on the “free movements” of capital, labour, goods and services, that is, on uncontrolled movements of all four. Capital needs these “freedoms” in order to maximise its profits, and for no other reason. Alexander Stubb, Finland’s prime minister, recently called the EU’s “free” movement principles “holy”. The creation of a piranha pool of unemployed labour will have them rubbing their hands with glee. Greece with high unemployment levels has no need of economic migrants...it merely lowers the value of labour

[ckaihatsu]

Those who denounce borders are very much aligning themselves with Industrialists ///bankers . Written in stone Globalism. The EU is built on the “free movements” of capital, labour, goods and services, that is, on uncontrolled movements of all four. Capital needs these “freedoms” in order to maximise its profits, and for no other reason.

Annnnnnnd you *continue* to look at the issue from the perspective of the ruling class (industrialists, bankers, etc.) -- yes, certainly capitalism in-part needs the free-movement of labor:

1. The capitalists support immigration and simultaneously support restrictions of immigration.

...But what about the laborers themselves who may want to find better-developed, higher-wage, more-advantageous national economies within which to live and work -- ?

You'll make the argument that, from the era of the primitive accumulation of capital, the historic over-production of *gold* just caused uncontrolled *inflation*, as *labor* can do today by crossing national borders and being in oversupply, driving down wages in that country -- *but* you're again ignoring collectively conscious workers self-organization, as I already mentioned at post #6:

Where's the international *solidarity*, as in cross-border organizing for the combined withholding of labor if workers on both sides of the fence aren't treated with parity -- ?

---

Alexander Stubb, Finland’s prime minister, recently called the EU’s “free” movement principles “holy”. The creation of a piranha pool of unemployed labour will have them rubbing their hands with glee. Greece with high unemployment levels has no need of economic migrants...it merely lowers the value of labour

With this example you gave yourself the proper context / opportunity to *denounce* insular nationalism, but, instead, you're *championing* it, making Greece sound like a helpless bystander as it watches a crime in progress, when instead it could certainly be *proactive*, looking to implement social services to *boost* the dollar-value of whatever labor happens to make itself available there.

[ckaihatsu]

[Y]es, certainly capitalism in-part needs the free-movement of labor

1. The capitalists support immigration and simultaneously support restrictions of immigration.

I'll add that the *reason* for the inherently cross-purposes double-standard regarding labor is due (apparently, as far as I can see) to the 'economic factions' of capital, with equity-sided investment capital looking for cheap inputs to the production / capital-gains-making process, while rentier capital doesn't want to see its hoarded wealth losing its value due to a cheaper / lower-cost prices regime that results from less-expensive inputs like low-wage / poor laborers that are unable to pay higher rents (and a prevailingly low federal-funds / interest rate, as is currently the situation).

[Jimmie Higgins]

...But what about the laborers themselves who may want to find better-developed, higher-wage, more-advantageous national economies within which to live and work -- ?

You'll make the argument that, from the era of the primitive accumulation of capital, the historic over-production of *gold* just caused uncontrolled *inflation*, as *labor* can do today by crossing national borders and being in oversupply, driving down wages in that country -- *but* you're again ignoring collectively conscious workers self-organization, as I already mentioned at post #6:

Is this directed at me? I don't understand your accusation. My post was not about how to "smash borders" it was a direct response to dodger's false equivalence that supporting migrants is the same as capitalists who support exploiting or excluding migrants based on their own concerns.

The ruling class uses borders and migrant designations in order to manage labor on either side of the border. Dodger is wrong that "free" has anything to do with neoliberal views of the movement of populations in general let alone laborers. Obama supported every neoliberal policy and still deported 2.5 million people. They want labor but on their terms... migration laws and restrictions are how they manage some of this historically.... it has nothing to do with if people prefer to migrate or not, people get pushed out and pulled into areas under capitalism constantly.


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[ckaihatsu]

Is this directed at me? I don't understand your accusation.

No, my bad -- I can see now that the way I pieced things together in that post tends to indicate an ambiguous intention.

I was directing it at dodger, but it doesn't read that way.

My post was not about how to "smash borders" it was a direct response to dodger's false equivalence that supporting migrants is the same as capitalists who support exploiting or excluding migrants based on their own concerns.

The ruling class uses borders and migrant designations in order to manage labor on either side of the border. Dodger is wrong that "free" has anything to do with neoliberal views of the movement of populations in general let alone laborers. Obama supported every neoliberal policy and still deported 2.5 million people. They want labor but on their terms... migration laws and restrictions are how they manage some of this historically.... it has nothing to do with if people prefer to migrate or not, people get pushed out and pulled into areas under capitalism constantly.


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Yup -- lifting my finger off the 'ban' button now.... (heh)

[Jimmie Higgins]

Ahh, I see.

On a side note to Dodger, if you say that migration leads to more labor competition, wouldn't the same logic oppose native workers who migrate internally from towns to cities or decaying industrial cities to tech jobs in other cities? Wouldn't this logic oppose workers having more than one child each?

If the answer is "yes" then why single out migrants? If the answer is "no" then the only logical common link is opposition on a xenophobic basis.

Migration to obtain waged labor is the lot of the proletariat. It's what defines us as exploited labor: we are not tied to feudal estates or slave plantations or often even our own personal ownership of a home. It has been the fact of proletarian life from the enclosures to today. We go where we can get paid, we turn our lives upside down to find work. We also have to compete with each other for work.

Workers have no country and recognize no national capitalist borders.


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